Frontdoor (Nasdaq: FTDR), has acquired venture backed Streem, Inc. in a cash and stock deal. Founded in 2017 by Ryan Fink (no relation), CEO, and Sean Adkinson, CTO, Streem is a Portland-based XR startup which empowers home service repair personnel and consumers to use see-what-I-see technology, to diagnose malfunctions remotely and to support repair personnel in the field, turning low-skilled workers into high skilled ones. Last year Streem acquired the UK start up Salerio to add a spatial component to their platform. Streem raised over 10M from influential VC s General Catalyst, Flying Fish and Betaworks, and had an early partnership with IAC’s HomeAdvisor.
Frontdoor is one of the biggest players in the $400 billion dollar home services industry with a network of tens-of-thousands home contractors/technicians and more than 2.2m homeowners nationwide. At the end of 2018, Frontdoor became a publicly-traded company whose ambition was to use technology to disrupt a business that has long resisted technology. “Streem’s going to help bring this vision to life,” said Frontdoor CEO Rex Tibbens. “They deliver a tech-enabled experience to consumers and contractors in a way that no other company has done before.” Since going public a year ago, Frontdoor’s stock has doubled in valuation. They now have a market cap of $3.8 billion dollars with more than $1.2 billion in 2018 revenue, up 9% from the previous year.
Streem, was recently selected by Frost & Sullivan for their prestigious 2019 Best Practices Award. Frost & Sullivan is a 50 year old consultancy headquartered in Silicon Valley, with offices in forty countries around the world. “Streem Inc. has developed an enhanced real-time communication solution by converting the existing camera in a mobile device into an intelligent camera,” begins the thirty page report on how Streem works. “The Streem platform is powered by advanced technologies, such as AR, computer vision, machine learning, object recognition, and spatial mapping, for remotely capturing real-time information and communicating with the service provider or home services expert. This innovative platform addresses the aforementioned challenges faced by the home services industry. For example, Streem’s AI-based solution enables providers in the home services industry or in other customer support industries to diagnose problems more effectively and to gather any necessary equipment or tools before physically arriving at the premises.”
Frontdoor is the parent company of American Home Shield, which founded the home service plan industry more than 45 years ago and today is the largest provider in the nation. Frontdoor also provides service through the HSA, OneGuard and Landmark home service plan brands. The company is headquartered in Memphis TN and currently has more than 2,000 employees, and a national network of over 16,000 independent contractor firms which employ 45,000+ technicians.
This acquisition also allows Streem to scale its operations and offerings to grow and more deeply penetrate other service channels. Fink and Adkinson will continue to lead the Streem team from their existing office in Portland.
“Combining Streem’s AR-enhanced platform with Frontdoor’s marketplace, will accelerate the transformation of the service experience for consumers and businesses alike,” said Fink. “We’ve long said our platform is defined by three key pillars: remote video collaboration, simple augmented reality tools, and, most importantly, contextual data. This allows service experts to capture information as well as — if not better than — if they were on site. Our shared visions for simplifying life and delivering innovative technology to help solve problems are extremely aligned.”
